With transgender fighter Fallon Fox, MMA enters uncharted territory

Maybe Invicta FC President Shannon Knapp put it best: When it comes to transgender fighter Fallon Fox, women’s MMA is in “uncharted territory.”

And, one way or another, that’s about to change. It’s just a question of how and when and what the map will look like once it’s done.

To start with, a little recap for those of you joining this story already in progress. On Monday Fox (2-0) told SI.com that she is MMA’s first known transgender fighter. The 37-year-old was born a man, but underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2006, she said, along with hormone therapy designed to aid her transition from male to female. She also competed in the Championship Fighting Alliance’s women’s featherweight tournament this past weekend in Coral Gables, Fla., where she knocked out Ericka Newsome with a knee to the head in the first minute of the first round.

It was only after the fight that Florida State Boxing Commission officials learned she was a transgender athlete, which has resulted in a review of her license and some doubts as to whether she’ll be allowed to compete in the next round of the CFA tournament.

According to Outsports, Fox’s physical transition and 10 years of hormone therapy have wiped out “any advantage she had from being born in a male body,” leaving her eligible to compete as a woman in the Olympics, the LPGA or the WTA. So why not MMA?

For one thing, there’s the question of whether promoters would want to promote a transgender fighter, and also whether female fighters would want to fight her. As current UFC bantamweight and Olympic silver medalist wrestler Sara McMann put it, MMA is a little different from many other sports “because you do get to choose your opponent to some extent.”

According to Knapp, who said she’s been approached in the past about finding a fight for Fox in Invicta FC, it’s an issue she isn’t sure what to do with just yet.

“There’s so many layers to it,” Knapp told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “My position is, I have a responsibility to all my athletes, to all the female fighters, not just one. I’m curious as to what they think.”

One female fighter who said she wouldn’t have a problem with it is Invicta FC commentator and newly minted UFC fighter Julie Kedzie, who wrote on her Twitter shortly after the story broke that as long as her opponent made weight and was cleared by the commission, “I’d fight whomever.” Then again, as Kedzie explained in a phone interview on Wednesday, her stance might be broader all the way around.

“The way we define things is not always the right way to define them,” Kedzie said. “As a fighter, I don’t give a s— who I fight. As long as they make weight and all that. If they want me to fight a guy and he’s in my weight class, hey, I get my ass kicked by guys in here all the time. I just like to compete. At the end of the day, when I fight I’m responsible for my performance and how I present myself to the world.”

As for the specific case of Fox, who fights a weight class above hers, Kedzie joked that “anybody who voluntarily takes estrogen is, in my opinion, a woman, because it’s horrible stuff.” But she also noted that even if Fox did retain some physical advantages of being born male, that in itself wouldn’t disqualify her from competing in MMA as a woman, at least in Kedzie’s mind.

“I think that if you pass the commission regulations, and if everyone says you’re a woman, then you’re a woman,” Kedzie said. “I don’t think it’s like in the case of ‘Cyborg’ [Santos], where she was deliberately cheating. I don’t think this is deliberately cheating. I think it’s someone who realized she was a woman. Regardless of what gender she was born as, she’s taken the hormones and changed her body, and she’s become a woman.”

Of course, that’s easier to say from a distance. Just ask Alyssa Vasquez, who faced Fox in an amateur bout in Rockford, Ill., this past April, and did so without any idea that Fox was a transgender woman.

According to Vasquez, Fox immediately shot for a takedown, achieved full mount, then eventually transitioned from a triangle choke to an armbar finish just over a minute into the fight. Fox’s strength was evident right away, Vasquez said, which led her to suspect that the loss might not have been completely legitimate.

“I thought she was taking steroids or testosterone or some type of enhancing substance,” Vasquez said. “That’s what I assumed.”

Only later did she hear rumors that Fox was transgender, which, she said, “honestly was not a shock.”

One of the things that irked Vasquez about the situation, she said, was the lack of disclosure. It was unclear to her whether the promoters of the Rumble on the River event knew that Fox was transgender, but Vasquez said no one gave her even the slightest inkling until well after the fight. Had she had that information before, Vasquez explained, she might never have taken the bout.

“Even though I’m stupid as hell, I would not jump into the cage with somebody that was born a man because I know my limits,” she said.

The issue of disclosure is a tricky one in this situation. In her conversation with Outsports, Fox acknowledged that she had been actively keeping her identity as a transgender woman a secret. She feared that “maybe someone would guess that I’m trans,” but was in no hurry to out herself publicly until a conversation with a reporter, my MMAjunkie.com colleague Steven Marrocco, revealed that her secret was going to come out one way or another.

“These past six years, people have seen me as a woman, not a transsexual,” Fox said. “People in the gym, people I train with, it’s been great, it’s been awesome. I’m just a woman to them. I don’t want that to go away. It’s unfortunate that it has to.”

But according to female fighter and trainer Lana Stefanac, who said she’s known Fox for years and helped her improve her jiu-jitsu, this might not be a secret that Fox had a right to keep from her opponents. Stefanac, who said she’s grappled with Fox enough to know that “her strength levels are no greater or less than another female at her weight and size and ability,” admitted that she had “mixed emotions” about Fox’s decision to fight without informing opponents that she was transgender.

“At one point it might have been, yeah, that’s your past, whatever,” Stefanac said. “But I also feel that the opponent should have, in my opinion, the right to choose. That should be up to the coach and corner and fighter themselves.”

That’s a stance echoed by Invicta’s Knapp, who said she needs more information on the issue of transgender fighters in women’s MMA before staking out a position for her promotion. But she has no doubts as to whether opponents should have the opportunity to make an informed choice.

“I really do 100 percent believe in full disclosure,” said Knapp. “The person standing across from her has the right to choose whether they want to take that fight with full disclosure. That is a stance that I feel very strongly about.”

The question is, where does Fox’s right to privacy end and her opponent’s right to full disclosure begin? And what if, now that Fox’s identity is public knowledge, finding opponents who are willing to fight her becomes nearly impossible? Will that effectively blacklist her from the sport, even if athletic commissions rule that she’s eligible to compete?

Those are questions McMann has considered. In her days as a wrestler, she had an opportunity to train with transgender wrestler Donna Rose, she said, and she didn’t feel as though she was at a prohibitive disadvantage in those sessions.

At the same time, McMann said, “I don’t think I would hold it against a girl who said, you know, I respect what you’re doing, but I don’t want to risk my career or risk getting injured because I’m going into the fight with a disadvantage.”

There’s also the issue of professional courtesy, according to McMann. Fox might not have been obligated to disclose her full history to every opponent under the rules, McMann said, “But I think that would be more courteous … because the other fighter might still stay yes. It’s better than surprising them with it and having them find out later on. Also, if the person loses and they didn’t know, it could create a bitterness toward the situation that didn’t have to be there.”

But when we talk about the issue of fairness with regards to transgender athletes, it’s not always so simple. There is the question of whether allowing Fox to compete in women’s MMA is fair to her opponents, but there’s also the question of whether prohibiting her from it – either officially or unofficially – is fair to Fox. Has she forfeited the right to compete in sports simply by virtue of being a transgender woman? That, according to McMann, is the question she’d likely grapple with if she were ever offered a fight under those circumstances.

“The part of me that has a mental health counseling degree says that everyone should be able to choose the life that they want and the things that they want,” McMann said. “No one should be kept out of sports. But the other part of me, the athlete, knows that I’ve trained with men my whole life, and I know the physical differences between a male and a female. I train with guys; I don’t compete against them. It would be difficult for me to say, absolutely I’d do it, no problem. I’d have to really think about it.”

Then again, as Kedzie pointed out, there’s a difference between seeking out an advantage and maybe, possibly receiving one inadvertently. There’s also the issue of allowing someone the liberty to live the way they want, but without forcing them to choose between their identity and their love of a sport.

“If Fallon Fox chose over a decade ago to become a woman, if she thought that she is a woman, and she had this surgery and she did all that, and if she discovered mixed martial arts in the process of that, I just don’t know that that’s something we should take away from her,” Kedzie said. “I still believe that, at the end of the day, it’s the best technique that’ll win you a fight.”

As the UFC 189 tour made its last stop in Dublin, featherweight champ Jose Aldo was met with a torrent of abuse from the Irish fans. It might have been unpleasant, but it might also have been just what he needed.